1 feb

US President Donald Trump doesn’t seem to want to repeat the Libyan scenario in Syria when he proposes setting up ‘safe zones’ in the war-stricken country, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said, adding that the Libyan case had been “tragic.”
“We understand that Donald Trump’s administration is yet to specify its approach [on Syrian ‘safe zones’],” Lavrov said at the Fourth Session of the Arab-Russian Cooperation Forum in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates.

Unlike all the meeting that were held in Doha, Istanbul and Riyadh over the last three years, in Astana, Syria’s opposition forces were represented by field commanders, thus breaking a sort of a monopoly on the negotiations that was held by the so-called Supreme Commission for Negotiations sponsored and controlled by Saudi Arabia.
For a long time it would be believed that no negotiator could bring the representatives of Damascus and the militant warlords under one roof to negotiate the situation. However, once this goal has been achieved the sky is the limit for the Syrian peaceful settlement, notes a well-known Arabic columnist, A. Atwan.
The most influential Egyptian newspaper, Al-Ahram, has expressed its hope that the meeting in the Kazakh capital Astana will strengthen the determination of the Syrian army and the Syrian people.

The US-led Coalition has carried out an airstrike over the militant-controlled city of Idlib, targeting the Carlton Hotel and the area around it.
The accommodation centre was believed to be an asset of the Jahbat Fateh al-Sham terrorist group used both for troop housing and as a meeting point for its prominent commanders.